A central pillar of contemporary communication research is the analysis of filmed interactions between people. The techniques employed in such analysis first took on a
recognizably modern form in the 1970s, but their roots go back to the earliest days of
motion picture technology in the late nineteenth century. This book presents original
essays accompanied by written responses which together create a dialogue exploring
early efforts at audio-visual sequence analysis and their common goal to capture the
”whole” of the communicative situation.
The first three chapters of this volume look at the film-based research of Gestalt
psychologists in Berlin as well as psychologists in the orbit of Karl and Charlotte Bühler
in Vienna in the first decades of the twentieth century. Most of these figures – along with
many other Central European scholars of this era – were driven into exile in the United
States after the rise of National Socialism in the 1930s. This scientific migration led to the
cross-pollination of communication studies in America, an outcome visible in the leading
project in interaction research of the mid-twentieth century, the Natural History of an
Interview. The following two chapters examine this project in its historical context. The
volume closes with a critical edition of a treasure from the archives: the transcript of
a speech delivered by Ray Birdwhistell, a key participant in the Natural History of an
Interview project and founder of kinesics.
Author(s): James McElvenny, Andrea Ploder, (eds.)
Series: History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences (4)
Publisher: Language Science Press
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 269+xix
City: Berlin
Contents
Acknowledgments
Capturing the whole James McElvenny and Andrea Ploder
1 Introduction
2 From Berlin and Vienna to the USA
3 From Palo Alto to New York and Pennsylvania
I From Berlin and Viennato the USA
1 Kurt Lewin und Fritz Heider: Ihre Freundschaft, ihre Filme und ihre Theorien Helmut E. Lück
1 Einleitung
2 Ihre Wege und ihre Freundschaft
3 Ihre Filme
4 Kurt Lewins sozialtechnologische Arbeiten
5 Feedback
6 Beziehungen der Attributionstheorie Heiders zur Feldtheorie
7 Erinnerung an Kurt Lewin
Feedback, Sozialkybernetik, Democratic Social Engineering. Kommentar zu Helmut LückClemens Knobloch
2 Kurt Lewin und Fritz Heider in der Vorgeschichte der US-Kommunikationswissenschaft Clemens Knobloch
1 Vorab
2 Kurt Lewins handlungstheoretischer Aktualismus
3 Fritz Heider oder: Film als Heuristik und Projektionsfläche für sozial-aktionale Muster
4 Heider und/oder Lewin?
5 Doppelte Kontingenz
6 Schlussfolgerungen und Affiliationen
Kurt Lewin’s wide-ranging influence on the history of qualitative research. Response to Helmut Lück and Clemens KnoblochAndrea Ploder
3 Hans Hermas Überlegungen zur Bildhaftigkeit des Films im Vergleich mit anderen Darstellungsformen – Vorstellung einer Arbeit aus den Forschungen zum Film am Wiener Institut für Psychologie in den 1930er Jahren Maria Czwik
1 Einleitung
2 Was ist ein Bild? – Die Bildkriterien nach Hans Herma
3 Der Film ist Bild – Der Film ist kein Bild
4 Versetzung und Orientierung im Filmraum
5 Sieht das Publikum den Film auf die vom Regisseur vorgesehene Weise?
6 Steuerung durch die Kamera
7 Schluss
Das nichtsprachliche Darstellungsmittel Film – Diskussionen am Wiener Psychologischen Institut. Kommentar zu Maria CzwikJanette Friedrich
II From Palo Altoto New York and Pennsylvania
4 Perception, awareness, and film practice: A natural history of the “Doris Film” Henning Engelke
1 Creating a Specimen
2 Watch and Learn!
3 A Transitional Object
4 “Socially Organized Ways of Seeing”
A question of perspective. Response to Henning EngelkeWendy Leeds-Hurwitz
Film as observation and experiment. Response to Henning EngelkeSeth Barry Watter
5 The Natural History of an Interview and the microanalysis of behavior in social interaction: A critical moment in research practice Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz and Adam Kendon
1 Introduction
2 The NHI core group members: The original collaborators at CASBS
3 Further developments in methodology and theory, following the 1955–1956 CASBS seminars
4 The Natural History Method as Developed from the NHI Project
5 Conclusion
Histories of progress and media histories. Response to Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz and Adam KendonSeth Barry Watter
The NHI and the emergence of video-based multimodal studies of social interaction. Response to Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz and Adam KendonLorenza Mondada
5.6 Introduction
5.7 Some innovations of the Natural History of an Interview project
5.7.1 A naturalistic approach of filmed materials
5.7.2 Transcribing sound film materials
5.7.3 Filming and transcribing for the analysis of social interaction
5.8 Continuing the NHI: the work of Birdwhistell, Scheflen, and Condon
5.8.1 Developing film and video technologies
5.8.2 More transcriptions
5.8.3 The analysis of spatial and temporal details
5.9 The beginnings of multimodal conversation analysis: Charles and Marjorie Goodwin
5.10 From NHI to contemporary multimodal analysis
Retracing the NHI. Response to Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz and Adam KendonHenning Engelke
The NHI and visual anthropology. Response to Henning EngelkeAdam Kendon
On some lessons of the NHI project and its forgotten holism of communication. Response to Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Adam Kendon and Henning EngelkeH. Walter Schmitz
The heritage of the NHI. Response to H. Walter SchmitzAdam Kendon and Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz
6 Ray L. Birdwhistell, “Lecture at American Museum of Natural History, October 4, 1980” Seth Barry Watter
1 Introduction
2 Ray L. Birdwhistell, “Lecture at American Museum of Natural History, October 4, 1980”
Index
Name index
